Thread: Signature Size Restrictions - Your opinion?

If a signature is taking up more than half the screen at 200 pixels high, the person needs to turn of signatures, not get them resized...Quietly protesting the 10 character limit

As I posted in Meta, the main reasons we changed the sig picture size limit are as follows:

• 1) Ease of viewing threads. It was getting out of hand to the point that you had to scroll more than the height of the average post between posts, to get past the oversize signatures. Not just with signature images, but with font size as well. Both were adjusted. Someone even had a YouTube video in their sig!
• 2) Bandwidth. The bigger the filesize, the more bandwidth used. The more bandwidth used, the more it costs the owner to keep DV running.
• 3) Speed. When you have topic viewing options set to 25 posts per page, with say 15 of those being different members, with 15 unique signature images at let's say 150kb a pop, you're looking at not only 15 distinct HTTP requests, but having to load over 2mb as well. This makes the whole page load more slowly, especially on slow connections. Hopefully reducing the size limit will help with this.
• 4) A signature should be just that: a signature. It does not need to be a full-size photograph of a landscape scene.

The limit is, as evidenced by this thread, not necessarily closed to feedback. If enough of you agree that 600x150px is too limiting, we may be inclined to provide a little more leeway. I'll be upfront with you: it was me that put forth 600x150px as a reasonable size. I stand by that: my own signature banners are typically 500x125px in fact. However, let's continue to vote and discuss.

Oh, and what's with the "Quietly protesting the 10 character limit." I keep seeing in your posts, guys? What good do you actually think it is doing to insert that into your posts in invisible text? This so-called 'quiet protesting' is nothing but a meme, and quite frankly I am disappointed in some of you for perpetuating it. If you have a problem, contact the staff through the Talk to Staff forum. We WILL take your constructive criticism into consideration, just as we are doing in this thread.

Originally Posted by Man of Steel

As I posted in Meta, the main reasons we changed the sig picture size limit are as follows:

• 1) Ease of viewing threads. It was getting out of hand to the point that you had to scroll more than the height of the average post between posts, to get past the oversize signatures. Not just with signature images, but with font size as well. Both were adjusted. Someone even had a YouTube video in their sig!
• 2) Bandwidth. The bigger the filesize, the more bandwidth used. The more bandwidth used, the more it costs the owner to keep DV running.
• 3) Speed. When you have topic viewing options set to 25 posts per page, with say 15 of those being different members, with 15 unique signature images at let's say 150kb a pop, you're looking at not only 15 distinct HTTP requests, but having to load over 2mb as well. This makes the whole page load more slowly, especially on slow connections. Hopefully reducing the size limit will help with this.
• 4) A signature should be just that: a signature. It does not need to be a full-size photograph of a landscape scene.

1. If a person is having a hard time loading a page/viewing a page, he/she can turn the signatures off. Why should the entire community be punished for the concerns of a few members? I personally had no problem, and my laptop certainly isn't great by any stretch of the imagination.

2. Bandwidth seems to be the big concern, and I gotta say, when the sigs maxxed out at 200 pixels tall, I didn't even come close to brushing the maximum size limit. Now, however, as I posted above, I'm sorely tempted to get as close to the maximum size limit as possible, both for quality and a bit out of spite.

3. Again, file size is the limiting factor. Wouldn't it have simply been easier to lower the maximum allotted file size instead of reducing the physical size of the signature?

4. We're not asking for full-sized photographs...just that we don't have to totally resize and/or get a completely new signature. This comes at a rather large inconvenience to many, especially to those with custom-made signatures and no clue how to resize their sig pics, thus dumping it on the rest of the community. Sure, there would have been problems with lowering the maximum allowed quality, but as I said, I never even came close to brushing the upper limits... Quietly protesting the 10 character limit.

Originally Posted by Mario92

1. If a person is having a hard time loading a page/viewing a page, he/she can turn the signatures off.

As I have stated earlier, members should not feel forced to turn signatures
off because others feel it appropriate to make their own signatures
obnoxiously large. Ease of viewing takes more than page-loading time into
account, as MoS made clear.

Originally Posted by Mario92

Why should the entire community be punished for the concerns of a few members?

Is the entire community being punished? Your choice of words
strikes me as a little odd. I hardly think this is a punishment. We made the
decision as a means of accommodating all members, those "few" that are just
as much a part of this community as you and I are. And in return those who
had signatures over what became the new size limit had to edit, but they
remained free to keep their signature nonetheless. Also bear in mind that
some images were well over 200 pixels in height.

Originally Posted by Invader

As I have stated earlier, members should not feel forced to turn signatures
off because others feel it appropriate to make their own signatures
obnoxiously large. Ease of viewing takes more than page-loading time into
account, as MoS made clear.

What are you people browsing on, anyway? My screen is relatively small, and I have never noticed this problem...

Is the entire community being punished? Your choice of words
strikes me as a little odd. I hardly think this is a punishment. We made the
decision as a means of accommodating all members, those "few" that are just
as much a part of this community as you and I are. And in return those who
had signatures over what became the new size limit had to edit, but they
remained free to keep their signature nonetheless. Also bear in mind that
some images were well over 200 pixels in height.

I admit, it was not the best choice of words...it is late, and language is beginning to fail me. I just guess that it seems sort of...I dunno...silly to have every member with a sig under 150 pixels high have to go through and resize it when bandwith seems to be the major concern...a restriction on maximum file size would have made more sense to me.

And how the hell could someone get a signature size greater than 200 pixels high with the old restrictions in place unless said person was a moderator? I mean, I can certainly understand reducing font size and eliminating youtube videos from sigs, but I think targeting the image height was maybe not the greatest way to go about things. Quietly protesting the 10 character limit.

I can't do anything about my sig because I don't have Photoshop at uni. It took a long time to arrange it initially given the existing size limits. It's not really fair to change things retroactively when I can't do anything about it; and I think it's pretty clear that my sig is completely aesthetically unobstrusive and doesn't take up much bandwidth at all.

Originally Posted by Invader

As I have stated earlier, members should not feel forced to turn signatures
off because others feel it appropriate to make their own signatures
obnoxiously large. Ease of viewing takes more than page-loading time into
account, as MoS made clear.

Okay, can these members step forward? Because I browse DV from a cheap-ass smart phone ALL THE TIME, where the signatures are BIGGER THAN THE SCREEN, and I still never had any sort of bandwith problems. Sure it loaded slow, but not enough to complain about. And in the on topic area, DV doesn't move very fast anyways. It's only in SB where fast posting really matters at all.

Originally Posted by Invader

Is the entire community being punished? Your choice of words
strikes me as a little odd. I hardly think this is a punishment. We made the
decision as a means of accommodating all members, those "few" that are just
as much a part of this community as you and I are. And in return those who
had signatures over what became the new size limit had to edit, but they
remained free to keep their signature nonetheless. Also bear in mind that
some images were well over 200 pixels in height.

If some signatures were well over 200px, which was the limit, why the FUCK would they not be able to surpass another limit? SERIOUSLY! THAT'S JUST STUPID! I don't know how anyone other than mods could have gotten above 200px, but what's keeping them from doing it again? If your whole beef is with the sig file size, CHANGE THE FILE SIZE! Changing the height is the most ass-backwards way you can possibly imagine to get file size down. A five year old could see that. Smaller file size equals more bandwidth. Smaller pictures does NOT equal more bandwidth. I'm a nice person, I don't usually cuss or use excessive caps, but seriously, what where you guys thinking?

Oh, and another thing. One of the big complaints is that the "sig is bigger than the post." Well DUH! The information on the side is bigger than most posts! People don't often post seven lines of text, so not even a picture is needed for this to happen. And by the way, MoS, congratulations on being yet another staff member to exceed sig limits (I'm referring, of course, to the seven line limit). Your wall of text can now rival most sigs in physical size.

Originally Posted by Man of Steel

• 1) Ease of viewing threads. It was getting out of hand to the point that you had to scroll more than the height of the average post between posts, to get past the oversize signatures. Not just with signature images, but with font size as well. Both were adjusted. Someone even had a YouTube video in their sig!
• 2) Bandwidth. The bigger the filesize, the more bandwidth used. The more bandwidth used, the more it costs the owner to keep DV running.
• 3) Speed. When you have topic viewing options set to 25 posts per page, with say 15 of those being different members, with 15 unique signature images at let's say 150kb a pop, you're looking at not only 15 distinct HTTP requests, but having to load over 2mb as well. This makes the whole page load more slowly, especially on slow connections. Hopefully reducing the size limit will help with this.
• 4) A signature should be just that: a signature. It does not need to be a full-size photograph of a landscape scene.

I believe these to be reasonable sizes, i mean i'm all for DV staying up and running, i would hate for this forum to drop because of members sucking up bandwith. I agree it would be hard to get a good sig with this limit, but hey i guess i saw this one coming and that's why i opened the DV Avatar/Sig shop lol. But seriously if anyone needs anything resized you can request that as well, we'll do our best to resize it and retain the quality.
Also i have a feeling like a lot of "western" eye shots are going to start popping up lol. Maybe the height could be a little more, but it's nothing to really complain about, i have a feeling that it's not the limitations that's got so many upset as it is the suddenness coupled with no heads up.

I voted yes, I see that the ability to have a signature at all is still present and am grateful for that. There's kids in third worlds that would fight over that freedom (← sarcasm)

I've got a proposition for a new rule. One that i think everyone would agree on:

Rule: Only Attractive Female DV members should be able to post in the pics thread. Also, only male members should be able to post in the pic discussion thread.

That would be WAY better than sig limits.

Originally Posted by Xei

It's not really fair to change things retroactively when I can't do anything about it

I agree, some time to have sigs edited before having the rule implemented
would have been a better way to go.

Originally Posted by Xedan

If your whole beef is with the sig file size

I have explained twice that it has to do with more than file size. MoS has
also made a point on that. I should not have to explain it for what would
consecutively be a fourth time.

Originally Posted by Xedan

Changing the height is the most ass-backwards way you can possibly imagine to get file size down. A five year old could see that.

I really don't know how to make the aesthetics issue any easier to understand.

Originally Posted by Xedan

If some signatures were well over 200px, which was the limit, why the FUCK would they not be able to surpass another limit? SERIOUSLY! THAT'S JUST STUPID! I don't know how anyone other than mods could have gotten above 200px, but what's keeping them from doing it again? If your whole beef is with the sig file size, CHANGE THE FILE SIZE! Changing the height is the most ass-backwards way you can possibly imagine to get file size down. A five year old could see that. Smaller file size equals more bandwidth. Smaller pictures does NOT equal more bandwidth. I'm a nice person, I don't usually cuss or use excessive caps, but seriously, what where you guys thinking?

You really need to calm down. Get off the internet for a minute. Go outside...enjoy the world. Come back when you've gotten some perspective. Seriously...it's not the end of the world. You say you're a nice person that doesn't usually cuss...lol...and you're completely losing it over a sig limit? Come on.

Originally Posted by Invader

It was not solely a bandwidth issue. Large images were being used together
with large texts to create signatures that were aesthetically displeasing. The
text size was reduced along with image dimensions in order to tackle the visible
size at the same time.

We did not want some people to feel forced to turn off signatures just because
a few members made ones large enough to take up half of the screen (or more
depending on monitor and display settings). Instead, we sought to find the
middle ground that would still allow everyone to display a signature and view
them within reasonable limits.

1) I think instead of reducing the dimensions on the signatures from 200 to 150, maybe there could be stricter rules on the signatures? Like for example a signature that is using up the 600x200 size limit plus a size 7 font should have their signature removed. Maybe put a cap on the character amount allowed in signatures?

2) I changed my screen resolution down to 800x600. I think the lowest you can go is 640x480, but my Geforce 8800GTS didn't allow this. I was able to see just about one post on my screen at a time. Even if I disabled signatures, one post would still only show up and I would have to scroll down. I'm sure this annoys the heck out of some people. So I can see where the problem lies within that, but how many people use a screen resolution that small?

And a suggestion is, if it comes down to it, maybe bump the sig size to 175 instead of 150?

And yet again, slayer knows what he's talking about. The staff can easily remove a sig pic if there's something wrong with it, so I don't see why they can't just do that with the words too. I mean, really. How often do people use a 200px sig coupled with six lines of 7 font size text. I never saw one, so that's a true testament to how few there must have been. And if a person can only see one post with a 200 pixel sig at a time, how in the world is that not the text book example of a person who needs to turn off sigs?

Originally Posted by Xedan

And yet again, slayer knows what he's talking about. The staff can easily remove a sig pic if there's something wrong with it, so I don't see why they can't just do that with the words too. I mean, really. How often do people use a 200px sig coupled with six lines of 7 font size text. I never saw one, so that's a true testament to how few there must have been. And if a person can only see one post with a 200 pixel sig at a time, how in the world is that not the text book example of a person who needs to turn off sigs?

1) >_>

2) I think that's a little over exaggerated...

3) The only time you could possibly see about 2 posts with an 800x600 resolution is if the person had like one line of text. Other than that, you would be scrolling down anyway. I think signatures also make a good break in between posts.

How is it over exaggerating? His whole case is that people used large sigs along with large text.

I say to put restrictions more along the lines of: If you have a sig pic, it takes up three of your seven lines. That coupled with the limit on text size would surely help any beef with having sig+text. Other than that it seems like too minor of a problem that some people can't see much on the screen and are too stubborn to turn off sigs. That would be an extreme minority among DV members.

one
two
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No one is going to do that obviously, but that's a bit much.

Edit: I say bump the signature size limit up to 175 or 200 and put a character limit on the signature.

I agree with these rules, I find them to be very reasonable. It is of course sad that some peoples custom sigs has to suffer, but that's only a start problem. Anyone still hanging around can have it fixed.
I especially notice that no-one have provided a compelling reasons as to why they need their sigs larger than 600x150 pixels, other than complaining about their current pictures no-longer being fit.
Also, it's not a retroactive rule. A retroactive rule would be to give everyone who used to have a larger sigpic an infraction, or some such. This is simply a new rule being enforced.

Originally Posted by Mario92

If a signature is taking up more than half the screen at 200 pixels high, the person needs to turn of signatures, not get them resized...Quietly protesting the 10 character limit

What if someone mostly views the page with a regular computer, but occasionally uses his/her PDA?

Originally Posted by slayer

So I can see where the problem lies within that, but how many people use a screen resolution that small?

Resolutions of that size are/were pretty common on netbooks.

but again, (though I'm not sure what thread I was in the last time I said it) I use the site from my phone all the time and I don't see a problem with the sigs aesthetically at all. For the most part I only dislike that there are some 175px or 200px on the side that keep everything out of sight without scrolling to the right. But even still, thats the side affect of using something other than a computer.

And as far as netbooks go, I can see a problem there. They have very narrow screens. But it still seems rather whiny to complain about having to scroll. I mean you can practically fit the computer in your pocket. If you don't think the low practicality of the device is out weighed by its convenience, I feel I should inform you that you made a mistake buying it.

I just got rid of my sig entirely, as I got kind of sick of it and didn't really care for it anymore anyway. A forum always looks well organized with smaller signatures, so I don't know why I got into the huge sig thing. So yeah, the new rule is fine to me, I guess.

Originally Posted by Xedan

but again, (though I'm not sure what thread I was in the last time I said it) I use the site from my phone all the time and I don't see a problem with the sigs aesthetically at all. For the most part I only dislike that there are some 175px or 200px on the side that keep everything out of sight without scrolling to the right. But even still, thats the side affect of using something other than a computer.

If the 175+px sigs bothered you, why complain when they're not around any more? Seems everyone wins.

Originally Posted by Xedan

And as far as netbooks go, I can see a problem there. They have very narrow screens. But it still seems rather whiny to complain about having to scroll. I mean you can practically fit the computer in your pocket. If you don't think the low practicality of the device is out weighed by its convenience, I feel I should inform you that you made a mistake buying it.

So you're basically saying "Well, screw them"? Shouldn't we try for the best of everyone? And might I point out again that you still haven't produced a reason for why they should need the big signatures.

edit:

Originally Posted by DeeryTheDeer

I just got rid of my sig entirely, as I got kind of sick of it and didn't really care for it anymore anyway. A forum always looks well organized with smaller signatures, so I don't know why I got into the huge sig thing.

Peer pressure. "Everyone" else were doing it.

I don't think you understood me. I was talking about the side panel containing the names, avatars, and info of everyone. Not signatures.

No, I'm saying they knew what they got into when they bought a netbook. They shouldn't expect the big-sig lovers to just bow down to them because they don't want to scroll down their tiny screens. This whole debate is now over having to scroll. Yes you heard me, having to scroll! And I think we should keep 200px signatures because you can show a lot more in them. Basically if you want to show an actual picture of something in 150px you have to cut out a ton of it, shrink it, or find a picture taken in epic-widescreen. And plus there are people who are known by their never changing sigs, which is really what signatures are supposed to do, stay the same, and most of these people have sigs taller 150px. There is no real concrete reason that signatures should stay at 200px other than personal preference and visibility. Really anyone can just shrink their sig, but it's not the same. But likewise, other than just to please people who only use netbooks and hurt their precious fingers with all that scrolling, there is no reason to impose an even stricter signature height.

Who said anything about using a netbook? Christ stop making idiotic assumptions. I'm actually on a 17" powerbook, 1440x900 resolution, and some people's sigs DID take up half the fucking page, ok? I have screen shots, but I'm not going to waste my time posting them just for you. I'm honestly getting really sick of your complaining.

Lets make a rule that no one's sig can be bigger than Nina's.

I've also seen sigs that took up have the screen, on a 1080p monitor.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Lets make a rule that no one's sig can be bigger than Nina's.

lol...you lose

I am completely fine with esthetically pleasing sigs at 600x150px There is no need to have anything bigger than that. Unless you're compensating for something.